


I Should Live In Salt

by cardinaleyes



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, mormor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-20 03:47:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4772321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cardinaleyes/pseuds/cardinaleyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Moriarty and Sebastian Moran begin their 'relationship' as Reichenbach looms, forcing Jim to consider whether he really has made the right choice he believed he was destined for all these years, while dragging Seb and Sherlock along for the ride.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In The Beginning There Was Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> will get angsty, occasional fluff, some smut and some violence (it's Jim and Seb, come on), and eventual Sherlock and John.
> 
> ''I should leave it alone but you're not right  
> I should live in salt for leaving you behind''

He wouldn’t tell Sebastian. It was too difficult, too complex, too many fucking questions, and being questioned wasn’t a thing Jim was entirely used to yet. Sebastian always managed to surprise him, mostly because no other human being had been allowed to live in Jim’s life long enough to have the chance to, and the ups and downs of natural human emotions still unnerved Jim, and this was a conversation he’d rather avoid. He twisted out his skull cufflinks, making them straight, making them perfect, as he strode towards the large glass doorway. Meetings with Sebastian were always...interesting. To say the least. Designed at first to take 10 minutes out of Moriarty’s day, to brief Sebastian on his hits for the week, who they were, who they’d be, all that tedious shite, but soon Jim had to extend the length due to...unseen circumstances. Whether it be Seb’s deliberate or indeliberate way of guiding the conversation off course to Jim’s bloody suit that day (“but you wore Westwood yesterday boss?!”) or Jim walking in to find Sebastian with a pale Silk sticking obscenely and offensively out of his mouth, or whether it just be a good and quick shag on the desk, Moriarty was always effectively put out of action for more than his desired 10 minutes. And no matter how much he cursed Seb, internally or vocally, and no matter how much he complained he’d fucked his schedule up and this wasn’t what he hired him for, Jim loved it...Jim fucking adored it, and would have it no other way. You see, no matter how much Seb had wormed his way into Jim’s life and Jim’s bed and Jim’s everything else, and no matter how much his snide comments grew in number each day, Jim was, and always would remain, in control, and if he didn’t like something, that something did not happen. If Jim truly didn’t enjoy these quick meetings, or as they’d become more frequently, quick shags, then they wouldn’t happen, simple as that. But they still did. They still took place. Maybe even a metaphor for their whole fucking relationship. If Seb really was affecting Jim in such an inconvenient way, Jim had plenty of other snipers to kill him for him.

Actually, Jim had tried to get Seb killed. Early on. As soon as Jim realised what was happening. He could see he was becoming...interested...curious...in another person, this half-drunk, always-smoking ex army man with such interesting behaviours, and Jim had never before given so much as a single fuck about anyone else, let alone one of his workers, one of his ‘pets’, his followers, so...to put it in the only way that can be described, in the wake of this new feeling, Jim Moriarty had gotten scared, and decided to run in the only way he’d ever known; by killing. Sebastian had avoided the first attempt, and they never spoke of it again. He never brought it up. He never held a grudge. In Sebastian’s mind, it never happened. Which infuriated Jim even more. So he tried again. And again, and after the 6th fucking attempt of trying to rid himself of this distraction in the form of an ex army sniper, he finally let Sebastian stay in his flat, and in his world. What a fucked up world where you can try and murder someone 6 times, and yet still be fucking them, still be...wanting them.

And after that, a sort of initiation process, Sebastian Moran was accepted by Jim Moriarty. Well, after all, he wanted a good sniper, he asked for a good sniper, and he got that and more. And it couldn’t be denied, Sebastian was the best worker Jim had ever had. Renowned and defined by his army days, Sebastian made every kill Jim had ever asked of him without question, without ethical reasoning, and without any after effects. Not like...Jesus, Jim grimaced at the thought...not like this one fucking imbecile, the one eight months before Seb, who left...fucking fingerprints and everything...such a mess. And Jim couldn’t stand mess, imperfection, anything less than flawless was not good enough. And Sebastian was flawless. His jobs. Not him. Fuck, Sebastian Moran certainly had flaws. Plenty of them. Jim often went through them to try and...dehumanise him, distance himself from him. Try and kid himself there was...he wasn’t...feeling anything. He committed many, so many, fashion crimes in the short time Jim had known him. Knitted ties. Denim jackets. Jesus. And his drinking. Sebastian could make his way through 5 cans of beer a day, easily, and that was a light day, a sober day. And the smoking, the fucking smoking, drove Jim as insane as was possibly left in him. Smoking in the apartment, in the bathroom, in the bedroom, smoking in Jim’s brand new Bentley, smoking right into Jim’s fucking face and watching the wisps of smoke swirl around his dark brown demonic eyes. Yes, Sebastian Moran had plenty of flaws.

As Jim pressed the button on the elevator and watched the doors slowly slide shut on the reception on the other side, he thought again about his plan. All his life Jim had known, something, something colossal that’s for sure, but still something worth it, would lead to this moment. Jim had known as long as he’d known he was this way inclined, that when he would finally bow out, finally solve this problem that had haunted him since his very being, it would be like this. In this way. And Jim would have it no other way either. All his life, all these little games, the playing with the ordinary people, the playing with Sherlock, all lead up to this. And Sebastian Moran, no matter how strong a foothold he now held in the door that was Jim Moriarty, would fuck that up for him.

At the high pitched ring signalling the elevator doors opening, Sebastian Moran looked up at his boss walking quickly and efficiently towards the clear glass meeting room. Sebastian chuckled to himself. If he could see so clearly outside, then those who could see equally inside would...well, let’s just say they would occasionally get a surprise to walk past the meeting room at 2 o clock on a Monday morning to find a well dressed man fucking another man in a leather jacket on the glass table, papers scattered uncared for all other the carpeted floor. Sebastian watched Jim walk into the room. He was wearing a dark navy Dolce and Gabbanna two piece suit, with skull cufflinks and a red diamond tie pin. His black shoes that tapped lightly across the foyer matched his equally black eyes, his equally back pushed back and gelled-within-an-inch-of-its-life hair. He looked good. It surprised Sebastian that he’d seen this suit before. In the 4 months that he’d been in Moriarty’s service now, he’d never seen him wear the same suit twice. But, I suppose, there aren’t as many suits in the world as there are days in one’s lifetime, and once a day must come where, god forbid, an expensive designer suit must be recycled and worn again. Jim hated it when Seb wore clothes more than once in a fucking week. Just the other day they’d woken up next to each other in Jim’s vast sparkling white king size bed, both naked, with Jim’s head resting slightly in the crook of Sebastian’s neck, their arms wrapped lazily around each other. They’d fallen asleep exhausted after they’d both come, and as Seb got up to make coffee, he pulled on his black V-neck t-shirt he’d been wearing the night before, just as Jim tore it over his head before clawing down his chest, drawing blood which he happily lapped up. “Sebastian, what on earth do you think you’re doing” Jim mumbled lazily from the bed, his Irish drawl a lot more apparent first thing in the morning. “Making coffee boss, I’d offer you some but I know you’re not a big fan of caffeine” Sebastian looked up at his employer, grinning widely, poking fun at Jim’s endless list of hatred that included the wretched drink. Jim had informed Sebastian in a matter of fact and bored way that he had worn that top the day before and if this happened ‘one more time, he’d be forced to burn all his clothes on a bonfire’. “But boss, that’d mean I’d be walking round London with nothing but my scars on”. And that shut him up. That was for Jim, and Jim only to see.

“Afternoon Boss” Sebastian grinned, almost insultingly as Moriarty walked through the door. He was at the opposite end of the table facing the door, leaning against it and smiling playfully through his eyes and his mouth. He was wearing jeans, another thing Jim hated, and a plain white top with his leather jacket. He knew Jim liked him in leather. Fucking loved him in leather, actually. “I’ve got somewhere to be in twenty minutes, so let’s make it quick Seb”. Jim wasn’t being rude, or at least, he wasn’t being rude in Jim standards, he was just rather...blunt. Jim handed him a piece of paper pulled from his inside pocket, with a photo of a well built, muscular, short man on it. Seb studied it. In his 40’s. Balding. Less field work, more ‘head of the organisation’, he guessed. “Donald Peterson. He’s running the organisation that blew up the jewellery shop last week.” Told you. “It needs to be done by tomorrow, Sebastian”. “Yes Boss”, Sebastian replied automatically and quickly. He did what he was told, no questions. Except, this time, he did have one. “Not my usual type of hit, Boss. Blowing up a jewellery store’s not exactly on our level of crime”. He caught himself and glanced up at Jim, making a mental note to not use the ‘our’ word. It was _his, Jim’s_ level of crime. Sebastian couldn’t put himself on par with Jim, he was just...the underdog really. “What’s so special about killing him?” Jim licked his lips and paused slightly, before looking up at Sebastian and shrugging ever so slightly. “Better safe than sorry”. And that was all Sebastian dared to question it. It didn’t matter anyway. Jim Moriarty had given the orders, and Sebastian Moran was contractually obliged to follow them.


	2. Pet

Seb groaned and scratched the back of his head forcefully with his rough and calloused fingers. The clichés in this were fucking ridiculous. Actually fucking ridiculous. It was the same day Jim had given the orders; kill the Peterson guy, no mess, no trail, no suspects, done by tomorrow. Easy. So easy it was fucking boring, and like he said, cliché. So cliché. See, Seb was poised on a rooftop, M24 rifle in hand, 9 o clock at night, staking out the doorway of an apartment block. 

‘Apartment block’. That’s what Jim called it too. It just made Seb laugh, made Seb mock. An apartment block to him, growing up in the East End, was two-hundred one bedroom flats fitted into a building mouldy with damp, treacherous with broken glass, and decorated with uninviting graffiti, each of those one bedroom ‘apartments’ filled by a family of 5, typically with only one or two of these being employable by any stretch of the imagination; obese, tattooed, drugged up, and all done with their lives by 25. That was an apartment block, a block of flats, a shithole, whatever you wanted to call it. Polish a turd and all that. But here, this apartment block, the apartment block where Donald Peterson lives, and also, if Seb did his job right, dies, was a lavish fucking skyscraper which had doormen during the day to help the fucking idiots who couldn’t manage to pull the handle themselves, what looked like velvety cream curtains in almost every window (the other windows were velvety red you see. Rich cunts are clones of each other, no imagination, they run just like fucking clockwork) and a sense that even looking at the fucking place would force you to take out a mortgage. But whatever. This is where the job would be done, in the doorway, carefully planned to be so late that the doormen had just clocked off, but the dusk London autumn air still held a little light for Seb to be able to find his target. Not that he’d missed it. Ever. Seb, on the rooftop, look through the eyepiece, find his mark, a fat middle aged man who the world wouldn’t miss, fire, pack away before the police or the witnesses came out, down the back stairs, maintenance man if anyone asked, not that they ever did, out the door, just another London man on his way home for tea. Easy. An easy job. A fucking boring, tedious job actually, but in Jim’s fairness, he usually set more complex, more exciting tasks for his sniper to be getting on with while his boss was rushing round London in his fine suits and his fine cars and his fine everything while he left his little pets to do his dirty work. Bless him. Jim never wanted Seb to be bored, he cared about him that much at least. Or that’s what Seb told himself. Anyway, it didn’t matter what Jim thought about or felt for Seb. It didn’t matter. 

Seb watched as a black Mercedes with darkened windows rolled casually, at ease, round the corner and up the street, up towards him, up towards Seb and the apartment block and the rifle. It pulled up outside the betting shop two doors down, and the corner of Seb’s mouth slightly twitched, a slight smile at how fucking predictable and tedious these wannabe crime business cunts were. Again, like fucking clockwork. They should be more like Jim, Seb thought. You couldn’t pin Jim down. But it had taken him 10 minutes that afternoon to find out that the end of Donald Peterson’s schedule each day involved his chauffer picking him up from his office (or as Peterson probably called it, as Seb had already internally judged him to be a pretentious prick, an insult that also fitted to his Boss too, his ‘Headquarters’) on Bond Street, every day at 9, dropping him off at his local betting shop, Peterson watching his chauffeur drive away, going into the betting shop for a bet on the 9:07, or 9:22 if he missed it, or both, and then taking the short few steps on his weighed-down stumpy legs into his apartment building to get pissed or call a hooker or go to sleep or whatever the fuck people do behind the closed doors that Seb would never let him get to. Seb wondered if people ever thought about Jim, ever looked at the criminal mastermind, the most terrifying man in London, and ever thought, ‘gosh I wonder what James Moriarty gets up to once his apartment doors are shut and the suits are off and the hair gels out, I really wonder’. Seb wondered too until he got the chance to find out. And just because he found out and stopped wondering, it didn’t stop him thinking, now about the facts, fucking constantly, about what Jim Moriarty did behind closed apartment doors, especially what Seb knew he did. With him. Anyway. Check of the watch. 

9:05. Check of the rifle. All loaded, all ready. Check of the roof, clear, check of the streets, clear. Eye to the eyepiece, sound of the ticking watch by his right ear. Not Rolex. Not yet. Though with Jim’s snide comments about Seb’s attire growing more and more frequent, it wouldn’t be long. Waiting. Seb’s steady and calm breathing in the falling dark, sounds of the sirens and shouts of London, no one paying attention to a man on a roof, a man with a rifle on a roof down a London sidestreet. Betting shop door opens, sound of slot machines and a faint hum of a TV inside. Fat man, the fat man, the fat man nobody cares about, walks out, betting slip in hand, a thick wad of notes tucked underneath it. Seb can see it. Seb imagines the smug smile on his face. A winner. Good. Good for him. Seb’s happy for him. Then he pulls the trigger, and the wad of money flutters along the London street, now stained a sticky red from its previous owner, and flutters and flutters past the kerbs and past the lampposts and past the apartment block’s lavish double doors with the welcoming glowing lights inside and past all the buildings and eventually past the man in the jeans and the leather jacket and the cigarette strolling away without looking back, job complete, home, home now to where his boss is waiting for him. Waiting for confirmation that the inconvenience is over with. And Seb after all has been such a good boy, surely he will be rewarded for his efficiency. And has he ever let his boss down before?


	3. Home

“Seb”.

Seb was waiting for it. The unmistakable Irish drawl was so inevitable and predictable he could set it to music. Like hitting a button and waiting for the reaction on the screen, like pressing play and hearing a tune unavoidably permeate the air. Or, in Seb’s case, like when you send a text that you immediately regret, one that you want to retrieve from the molecules of the air and suffocate and crush. But once you hit send, it’s gone, and that’s what Jim was like; once you hit a nerve, you immediately regret and despise any part of you that possibly thought that would be even remotely funny.

“Sebastian”.

It was firmer now, still soft, still calm, but underneath there was the very distinct tone of something brewing; something bubbling, a volcano ready to erupt if one more utterance was needed. Seb was brave, but not that brave. He replied this time.  

“Yeah, boss?”

“The cigarette, Seb”

For fucks sake. All Seb wanted was the relief, a quick removal of tension before he could move on to the slightly, _slightly_ more accepted pleasure of the whisky; he’d needed something immediately, like when you open the fridge and find something to snack on while you’re looking for something to snack on because you’re that impatient and that desperate that you need it _now_. He’d been discreet, he’d walked into the living space of the apartment that offers itself to you as soon as you walk through the door, all cream’s and white’s and grey’s, saw Jim wasn’t there, and with the frantic attitude reminiscent of when he used to hide the liquor from his old man, walked over to present his back to the room, and stood staring out of the window (well, Jim called it a window, to him it was literally a wall; a floor to ceiling wall that happened to be glass that you only came across in the swankiest and poshest of places belonging to the most narcissistic and self-obsessed cunts who Seb usually hated immediately from the first breath of them. He let himself be fucked against that window.) shielding his face, he lighted it in one flick, and it didn’t even get it to his lips, didn’t even get one luscious and sensual drag of the damn thing before Jim was on him like a predatory animal.

Seb grimaced. “Sorry boss”. He reached up and threw it out of the window, having to let the cold grip of night time air calm him rather than the sickly sweet poison of nicotine. Because he knew the rules. No cigarettes, no shoes on the sofa, no wearing yesterday’s clothes, no leaving dishes around the apartment, no crumbs in the bed (not that he’d get fucking chance), no buying any item of clothing that was deemed “horrendous, darling” by Jim, and yet no wearing clothes that were more than 6 months old (Seb had to even bargain for that extended time limit. Jim said 3), and, oh yeah, no fucking cereal. Don’t even ask about that one. There were house rules. He was living with Jim Moriarty after all. And it was his apartment. It wasn’t even like Seb had moved in, not officially. Nothing was ever made official, not with Jim, nothing was ever initiated that would break the cool, smirking, don’t-give-a-fuck barrier that he effortlessly radiated, especially not something so forward and so, frankly, _humiliating_ , than making a big song and dance of asking Seb to move in with him. So, it just happened. Seb stayed over more and more. Soon they even developed a morning routine. Jim fucking Moriarty, in a morning routine with another person. And then sometimes Seb was there during the day, sometimes he was allowed to step over the threshold without the raw purpose of fucking and shagging and maiming and screwing burning in the back of both of their minds, and then one day as they were both leaving the door to go their separate, rank-opposing ways for the day that showed the hierarchy clearly, Jim handed him a set of keys. “And it’s not so you can water my plants while I’m away, tiger”. And then he pressed the button for the lift and started detailing Seb’s upcoming hits for the week, and that was that. Seb daren’t make any comment on it, and not just because he valued his life and, to be honest, the fucking set of keys, but because he was stunned; shocked and surprised and speechless at the monumental offer that had just been granted to him as simply as a ‘good morning’, placed in his fingers in the form of 2 keys; one for the lift and one for the apartment. Seb had never spent the night with Jim when they hadn’t fucked. He didn’t even know how that would come about. How do you fall asleep in someone’s arms or curled up against them, spoon them, bodies entangled, hands on chests and in hair, breath in sync, wake up next to someone breathing them in and radiating their smell with your hands stuck to their warm skin without being naked and having fucked them like an out of control beast the night before, without waking up, in Seb’s case, with a new scar and blood on the sheets? They weren’t a couple. They weren’t lovers. They weren’t boyfriends or partners or friends with benefits. They were just fucking. The head of a major crime organisation and his sniper, just fucking. That’s all it was. So why, Seb thought, always, even against his own demand not to, did he have a set of keys?

“How did it go?” Jim was still in his suit. He’d come out of the bedroom to Seb’s right, but it wasn’t surprising to see him unchanged, even though it was nearly 10 o clock at night. To Jim Moriarty, ‘comfy clothes’ didn’t exist. Seb didn’t think anything but Westwood and Louis Vuitton suits existed to Jim; the only other clothes he’d even seen around were the jeans and plain V neck tops he wore when he was…well, Seb didn’t know what else to call it; when he was in disguise. When he was pretending to be someone else, when he was pretending to be _with_ someone else, all for information, all for…Seb didn’t know… _the game_.

“Fine. No problems”. Seb was feeling the tension tonight. On edge. He didn’t know why. This morning he was fine, he was happy, he was flirty and cheeky and playful, and even doing the hit, he was brooding, but he was fine; he was coming home (shit, another mental note never to call it _home,_ god forbid Jim ever heard _that)_ he was coming _back_ to Jim, why wouldn’t he be fine. But something, and Seb was sure it was something echoing from Jim, was making him feel…foreboding. Not quite anxious, because it wasn’t quite conscious, but something within him, something subconsciously, was seeming to scream at him, seeming to yell and kick and bite inside his own head, desperate and frustrated, needing to be heard, telling him something was coming. Something was wrong. But he was probably just tense. And he was probably just in need of a drink. So he pushed it down and locked it away, because it didn’t really mean anything, because Jim hadn’t walked over and pulled the cigarette from between Seb’s two long fingers and burnt him with it like he did the first time he caught him smoking in the apartment; when Seb didn’t know the house rules. So Jim was fine. So, therefore, Seb was fine. Everything was okay, and nothing was coming.

He reached for the whisky bottle anyway.


End file.
